The invention is directed toward a device and method for attaching one or more paintball pods to the underside of the air canister of a paintball marker. A band of material encircles the canister, either covering the entire bottom and mid-section of the canister as a one-piece jacket or cover, or encircling the canister through a flat harness body with a retaining loop around which double-sided Velcro® cinches the harness body to the canister. The harness can be made of a number of different materials with some combination of non-skid and cushioning characteristics. The device protects the air canister, makes retrieving paintball pods easy and efficient, and presents a much smaller target than do other means of providing replacement paintballs. The invention also allows the player to gain mobility, as he/she does not have to deal with paintball pods flopping around during running, diving, crouching, jumping and crawling activities.
Paintball appears to have originated as a method for farmers and ranchers to quickly and effectively mark tress and livestock. A paintball is a sphere filled with one of several colors of paint, contained by a hard, semi-brittle surface that breaks upon contact with another surface. The paintballs are shot out of a paintball gun, which is also called a “marker”. An air canister attached to the paintball gun supplies the power to propel the paintball up to several hundred yards, although the effective range is usually under 150 feet, and the ideal distance to target is less than 80 feet, at a velocity around 190 mph.
During the early 1980's, it became an organized activity during which teams of paintball players would hunt one another in either an indoor or outdoor paintball arena. In paintball games the object is to shoot a player on the opposing team such that your paintball bursts or breaks on his/her clothing or gun, creating an obvious stain. All persons so marked by a paint splatter over a certain size (usually the size of a quarter) are supposed to put their paintball gun in the air and walk off the playing field.
By the end of the 1980's there were a number of paintball arenas throughout the world, ranging in quality from carefully designed indoor locations to cordoned-off outdoor lots where the only protection from enemy fire were naturally growing trees and naturally occurring hills and valleys. The goals of paintball games also expanded, from an initial “capture the flag” approach to the currently popular goal of shooting every member of the opposing team before they shoot every member of your team, commonly referred to as “elimination”.
As the playing fields, rules, and cash prizes for paintball competitions have grown, there have been concurrent advances in the technology. Two of the major areas of improvement from the beginning have been to a) decrease the target size of a paintball player by making accessories small and/or locating them in front of or behind the person (as opposed to having accessories hang to the side of the player, thereby increasing the player's silhouette and target size), and b) facilitate a rapid re-supply of paintballs to the paintball gun.
An average paintball gun can only store around 200 paintballs in its hopper, depending upon the size of the hopper. It should be noted that the larger the hopper, the larger the target presented to an opponent, so carrying a larger hopper has its disadvantages as well as its advantages. One of the main goals in improving paintball gear is to decrease the effective target size a player presents so that it is more difficult to hit him or her with a shot paintball. Thus, once a user has exhausted the hopper, he/she needs to replenish the paintballs. There have been invented a number of ways to accomplish this, the most common being the use of paintball “pods”, which currently come in sizes of 100 and 140 paintballs. Prior methods of storing pods include placing them on belt loops. This method has obvious drawbacks: if the pods are placed on a person's hips, they will effectively increase the target area, thereby rendering a user more likely to get shot; if the pods are attached to the front or back, a user increases the chances of crushing the paintballs by falling on them, or, even worse, incurring an injury by falling on the cylinders. Pod location is also a major comfort issue.
When the pods are dipped onto the front, the player has difficulties crouching (to minimize target size) or crawling, as is frequently needed to move safely across a playing field. Pods clipped onto a player's back expose extra surface area on a crouched player turned sideways, as well as being difficult to reach when a player needs to refill his/her marker. Other methods of attaching pods have been to the legs and wrists of a user, both of which again would increase the player's silhouette and target area, and as with the waist attachments, hinder the user's ability to quickly and effectively retrieve a paintball pod. The small size that can be effectively carried on a wrist also greatly diminishes the effectiveness of carrying wrist pods, as the exposure a player takes on by putting his/her marker down to fumble with wrist pods is frequently not worth the ten or so extra paintballs obtained from the pod.
An additional problem facing players is that one of the more sensitive (and expensive) parts of a paintball gun is the air canister and its connection to the gun. Since paintball involves a lot of falling down, both intentionally to present a small target and/or to stead the gun for firing, and unintentionally due to lack of balance or being struck unexpectedly by an opposing player's paintball, protecting the air canister and its connection is of crucial importance to the paintball player. Paintball guns are also dropped on occasion, either during the heat of battle in a paintball game, or when being stored while not in use.
The current invention provides a simple, cost-effective solution to both of these problems: a paintball pod tank harness which allows a user to attach one or more pods to the underside of the air canister, thereby not only cushioning the air canister from the jolt of hitting the ground during a fall, but also providing the user with a ready, easily accessible supply of replacement paintballs, from a location and in a configuration that presents a much smaller target than do other means of providing replacement paintballs. The invention also allows the player to gain mobility, as he/she does not have to deal with paintball pods flopping around during running, diving, crouching, jumping and crawling activities.